By ERALDO SOUZA DOS SANTOS*

Commentary on the production of “Waiting for Godot” by Teatro Oficina

This past Sunday, December 8th, the last performance of Waiting for Godot at the Carlos Gomes Theater, in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The last play directed by José Celso Martinez Corrêa before his tragic death in July 2023, the Godot from Teatro Oficina updates Samuel Beckett's work in the face of the absurdities of the present.

Such is the interpretative strength of Ricardo Bittencourt, in the role of Pozzo, and of Roderick Himeros, in the role of Felizardo (Lucky, in Beckett's original), especially in the first act, that Alexandre Borges and Marcelo Drummond, better known to the public, are eclipsed.

The play hints at its most interesting moments, references to the persistence of socioeconomic structures in colonial Brazil and, perhaps, to use Saidiya Hartman's concept, survival of slavery in the country. Vladimir reminds Estragon that they once worked on a sugarcane plantation; the Messenger, who is black, suggests that he lives in a slave quarters on Godot's farm, where Godot regularly attacks his brother; Pozzo lives in a Big House. The representation of Felizardo, a “slave” in Beckett's original, with a red delivery man's backpack on his back links the precariousness of the profession and the expansion of companies like iFood to a new form of slavery.

Himeros is an extraordinary actor, but I couldn't help but wonder during the three-hour play, as a mere speculative experiment and beyond the question of representation, what would change in the conception and reception of the work if the actress or actor who plays the "slave" Felizardo were black. What would change if, in the next – third – version of the play Godot from Oficina, all the horrors that we see Felizardo suffer in the first act, and that probably lead to his muteness in the second, were the horrors that characterize the lives of black people in this country?

It is possible that many black people would not be able to bear – and I do not know if I would be able to bear – seeing a black person on stage suffering the humiliation and violence that Felizardo suffers in the play. And I do not know, honestly, if a black Felizardo would not eventually be cathartic for the white audience, a large part of which contributes to the reproduction of the humiliation and violence suffered by millions who are not at all lucky, but pretend that it does not concern them. Very possibly, black suffering would become a spectacle, as always and once again, in vain.

Black or white, the play, in its current form, despite its good intentions, comforts those who consider themselves part of the progressive camp: the reference to Palestine, Brumadinho and the environmental catastrophe in Rio Grande do Sul, as well as the jokes about COVID-19 and the inability to think of the “bolsominions”, do not shock those who have already arrived at the theater knowing Teatro Oficina.

References to slavery, in this sense, probably also do not shock an elite that has already invested its money in anti-racist manuals and, equally, in tickets to the play. For this part of the progressive camp, a black Lucky One would mean absolutely nothing.

Despite the comfort it provides to the elites, the play contains a profound critique that we could only ignore at our own peril. Even blind, Pozzo is still capable of enslaving Felizardo; even after Godot's death at the hands of Exu, the black Messenger continues to exercise his role as messenger (in whose name?); Didi and Gogo apparently commit suicide at the end, which does not change the order of the world, but confirms it.

The great strength of the work in its version afro-anthropophagic perhaps consists in bringing back to the scene the persistence of forced labor and slavery – not the survival, but the “life” of slavery: thus offering a powerful refutation to a theory and a concept that invite us to see slavery as a zombie when, in fact, it is an old acquaintance, very much alive, thank you.

*Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Cornell University.

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